that a marriage might be dissolved by the wife's absence from her husband's house for three consecutive nights is reproduced without a word of disapprobation; for it certainly acquires no additional authority from the fact that it is attributed to Heineccius, who, since the discovery of the manuscript of Gaius, has ceased to be of weight as a historical civilian.

We

But, while it is our duty as reviewers to point out its shortcomings, we are free to admit the merits of the volume before us. We think its plan too ambitious for an elementary treatise; hence much of great importance is altogether overlooked, and much important matter treated of with a brevity altogether disproportionate to the attention devoted to questions of very little moment. observe in it also a good many serious errors of doctrine; not a few mistranslations and misapprehensions of the meanings of authors either dissented from or approved; a tendency throughout to rely too much on modern manuals rather than on the original texts; a good many wrong references; and quite a superabundance of printer's mistakes, some of them rather amusing, such as Paulus for Plautus (p. 83), and Elg. Mosaic. (p. 180) for the Collatio legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum. Yet there is much good matter in the book; and, its defects notwithstanding, any student who makes himself master of it will have little to fear for the results of his examination, in so far at least as the Law of Persons is concerned.

A Treatise on the Law of Scotland relating to Law Agents, including the Law of Costs as between Agent and Client; with an Appendix containing Relative Statutes, Acts of Sederunt, all the Tables of Fees, etc. By JOHN HENDERSON BEGG, Advocate. Edinburgh Bell and Bradfute, 12 Bank Street. 1873.

IN the majority of cases the writing of a Scotch law-book must be due either to an elevated and expansive philanthropy or to hard necessity. The scanty remuneration afforded by publishers may induce a very few unhappy lawyers to devote their days and nights to enlighten the minds or facilitate the labours of their professional brethren. But in these times it is almost absurd for any one to hope to increase his practice or secure professional promotion by adding, however creditably, to the literature of jurisprudence.

So far as practice is concerned, it is much more profitable to have been begotten by an eminent W.S. or an influential divine, to have two or three Parliament House clerks or enterprising young agents as your cronies, to be hanger-on to a prosperous counsel somewhat your senior (especially if he has an acute clerk, who may also be yours), to "suck up" to the two or three big agents who still concern themselves with the selection of counsel, or to give judicious dinner parties (if you can), than to waste your nights ir the study of Erskine and the composition of treatises on Multures o Mortifications. If success can be secured on easier or pleasante,

terms, it is surely folly to waste the midnight gas; and if you possess any of the advantages enumerated, it would be absurd not to avail yourself of them, if your talents lie that way. For that success in the law requires certain talents and much perseverance, even when you resort to the less glorious, though not in all cases illegitimate, means alluded to. Some of these means are not illegitimate unless they are abused; but in this age, which makes haste to be rich, the ambition of the bar has made "hugging" one of the fine arts, and it has been brought to such perfection as to make other old fashioned ways of getting on, such as study and writing, seem poor and trivial. It has been practised once or twice with such delicate tact that some of those practised on felt but never knew the art that produced the soft titillation—with a soothing and attractive grace that made even those who understood it yield to the wheedling charmer, and satisfy their consciences with the thought that the clever cajolery that was too much for them might perchance seduce the bench and the jury too. The austere moralist might be pained to witness a mean creature thus wriggling its slimy way towards the bench. But for our part we have from time to time looked on with a purely scientific curiosity and interest at its operations, watching how its little wires are pulled, and its little traps baited and set; how the sternest and gruffest and biggest of agents yield to its blandishments, how even great statesmen, stern and unyielding to less fascinating sinners, are charmed and vanquished by its winning ways.

Mr. Begg has chosen the better part of gaining, by honest work, a reputation for sound law and careful diligence, and has made it our pleasant duty to read and consider his adventure in the field of legal authorship. We commend his resolution thus to utilize the earliest years of his career in the Parliament House, and we discern a rare sagacity in the choice of the subject of his labours. Only 1500 or 2000 persons can be expected to buy law-books in Scotland, and very few of these buy every Scotch law-book. The first point, therefore, with a wise author and publisher is to make a book which will be attractive or useful to as many as possible of these 1500 or 2000 lawyers. Mr. Begg has been judicious in his choice, for he has written about the one subject that must be most interesting to every lawyer,-his own rights and liabilities; and he has brought out his book at a time when recent legislation has made lawyers specially attentive to the subject, and indeed has made it compulsory on many of them to acquire a more minute acquaintance with it. We should not be surprised therefore if even an inferior book on this subject should have obtained a very considerable sale.

Mr. Begg's treatise, however, is very far from being an inferior book. It has been got up with anxious care, and very minute investigation of every point bearing on its subject, and it is arranged and written with much skill and ability. Not the least interesting of its features is the embodiment in the proper places of the pro

visions of the Law Agents Act. Our readers are already familiar with Mr. Begg's treatment of this measure, which he made the subject of an article in our September number; but it will give them a high idea of his energy and of the workmanlike character of his book, that after the passing of the Act he fitted each of its provisions into the proper chapters and paragraphs of a book published in October, instead of treating of the new statute in an appendix or supplemental chapter.

It would be useless to illustrate the book before us by quotation, especially as the article we have referred to may well serve as a specimen. Indeed, the book is so well compacted a whole that it would be difficult to find a quotation that would not suffer by separation from the context. The book deals with everything that personally concerns the law agent, from his entrance on apprenticeship, until he is removed from the rolls by death or the Court of Session. The first and second chapters relate to qualification, admission, and certificate. A special chapter, well worthy of the attention of the profession, which ought to guard its interests more carefully than it does, as well as of accountants and other poachers, is devoted to "unqualified practitioners." Chapters follow on the privileges and appointment of law agents, the evidence of their appointment, and the extent of their authority, the dissolution of the relation of agent and client, their remuneration, interest on their accounts, taxation, hypothec or preference, triennial prescription, on their disabilities, confidentiality, their liabilities, etc.; summary proceedings, their duties generally, etc. The various Societies are dealt with historically and otherwise, and an ample appendix contains the Acts of Parliament, all the Tables of Fees, and some miscellaneous forms. The index seems to be well prepared. Altogether, it is a book which no law agent who regards his own interest should want.

The Month.

Interim Appointments by the Court of Session to Judicial Offices. -The application of Mr. Glassford Bell, praying the Court of Session to nominate and appoint a properly qualified person to exercise the office and jurisdiction of sheriff of the county of . Lanark, in room of the petitioner, with full power to him to hear and determine causes, and to perform all other acts and duties competent to the said office and jurisdiction, as fully and freely as the petitioner himself might have done, and that during the petitioner's present temporary disability, or during such limited period as to their Lordships shall seem proper," raises questions of some importance. It is said in the petition, and it is true, that "in numerous cases the Lords of Council and Session have been in use, where

public convenience or necessity required, to make interim appointinents to judicial and other offices, and in particular to the office of Sheriff." But it is long since the Court has been asked to appoint an interim Sheriff at all; and none of the old cases in which it was done present precisely the same circumstances as this. The present case, moreover, is one of so much greater importance than any in which the Court ever interfered before, that it is not surprising that the Judges should have treated it when it appeared in the rolls as one demanding very serious attention, and should have endeavoured to get the responsibility divided with the department of the Queen's Government which has power to grant leave of absence to judicial functionaries.

We pointed out last month that when Sir Walter Scott became incapable, shortly before his death, of exercising the duties of his Sheriffship, a special Act of Parliament was passed, authorizing the Crown to appoint an interim Sheriff. As the Court was at that time in the almost constant habit of appointing interim Sheriffs Depute, where the office was vacant, we must assume that it was then supposed that that power did not extend to the case where the office was full, but the Sheriff unable to fulfil its duties, and also unable or unwilling to resign. It may have been thought that the law assumed, in such circumstances, that the Sheriff, if not mentally incapable, would retire, so that a new appointment might be made by the Crown. It will be of some importance in the present case to ascertain whether any application was made to the Court before the bill relating to Sir Walter Scott was introduced into Parliament. There can be no doubt that the Lord Advocate of the day, if not the Court also, had in view the report made to the Court on this subject in 1777 by the Clerks of Session, Mr. Tait and Mr. Mackenzie, in regard to an application for the interim appointment of a principal keeper of the Signet in room of Sir Gilbert Elliot who had died. That report may be worth quoting, as an authoritative statement of the law. It bears :

"That it has been your practice, and the practice of your predecessors, to interpose in supplying vacancies in offices, where these vacancies tended to stop or retard the administration of justice, and, in particular, that your Lordships have done so on the following occasions:-Primo, In the administration of royal boroughs, where the nomination of Magistrates has failed, either by a reduction of the election, or by a non-election, on account of civil commotions in the country. Secundo, In the appointment of interim Commissaries, and interim Sheriffs, where by death these offices have been vacated. Tertio, in the appointment of an interim keeper of the general register of hornings, and interim clerk to the admission of notaries, and an interim keeper of the minute book. Quarto, In the appointment of an interim writer to the Privy Seal, and of an interim depute-keeper of the Privy Seal. As to the higher offices, we observe two instances where your Lordships' predecessors interposed in the like manner. One was in the case of a vacancy in the office of clerk-register. On that occasion your Lordships authorised one of your clerks to sign all extracts which should have been signed by the Register. At the same time, the order seems to have been made in virtue of a special letter from his Majesty. The other was with regard to the Signet, and the keeper of the Signet, 23d March

1639. At this time it would appear that there was no keeper of the Signet in Scotland, and even that the Signet itself had been carried out of Scotland, the lords interposed, and not only named a keeper of the Signet, but appointed all letters to be marked by this keeper; and this being done, they declared that the same should be reckoned to have the same effect as if the letters had passed the Signet."-Acts of Sederunt, vol. i. p. 590.

Another difficulty, which will no doubt be in view of the Court, is that since 1822 few or no such appointments of Sheriffs ad interim appear to have been made. In the course of the argument which will be submitted in support of the petition, later precedents may perhaps be founded on; and it will be important to show that such appointments have been made subsequent to the Sheriff-Court Act of 1838. For one of the reasons generally urged in support of the petitions for such interim appointments under the old practice, and indeed the main reason for making them, was that during the vacancy of the office no summons could run or diligence be used in the name of the Sheriff-that the jurisdiction of the Court was, in short, suspended. A remedy for this was provided by 1 & 2 Vict. c. 119, sec. 4, enacting that "on the death, resignation, or removal of any Sheriff Depute" his substitutes should continue to hold their offices, and exercise all the jurisdictions, powers, and authorities thereto belonging; "Provided always that appeals may be taken in causes decided by such Sheriff-Substitute to the Sheriff to be appointed, which shall be laid before such Sheriff when he shall enter upon his office." This Act removed the chief evils which led to the intervention of the Court in former times; and it may even be argued that the proviso excludes by implication its power to nominate an interim Sheriff, suggesting that appeals from judgments during the interregnum, and if so, then also those from judgments of the Sheriff-Substitute before its date, can only be taken to the new Sheriff, whose nomination in the ordinary way is contemplated.

It may be doubted whether the Court of Session's appointment of an interim Sheriff would give him any criminal jurisdiction. The Court of Justiciary formerly appointed Sheriffs-depute on the petition of Heritable Sheriffs, when it was necessary for special purposes falling under the jurisdiction and superintendence of that Court (Hume, ii. 33).

These are some of the difficulties which must be encountered in dealing with this application, if we look to the former practice of the Court, and the written law on the subject. But still greater difficulties may perhaps be raised on constitutional grounds. It was not easy to assign a basis of principle for the limited and carefully guarded powers which the Court exercised in the class of cases to which we have referred. It was an exertion of extraordinary power in emergencies, to prevent a jurisdiction from being altogether in abeyance, to save, in fact, the indispensable everyday functions of the local judiciary, without which society could not continue to exist. This, however, is no longer necessary, and the Court therefore may have